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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On July 11 2020 05:55 ChristianS wrote:I don’t generally like to just drop a tweet thread in here, but this one is talking about an issue I was discussing a little while back with current online discourse. And it might be relevant to the current dustup with Danglars? https://twitter.com/millicentsomer/status/1281414272984027137?s=21In this case, I think Erasme was reacting less to Danglars specifically and more to the (often cynical) use of the “rising cases, falling deaths” analysis in right-wing discourse (The Atlantic has a decent analysis of that phenomenon here). I’d consider plenty of that analysis worthy of mockery and scorn of the type Erasme gave (Dennis Prager’s “lockdown may be the greatest mistake in human history” comes to mind), but Danglars didn’t say any of that. Maybe he thinks it and is holding his tongue, but if we assume the shittiest possible version of other posters’ intents and arguments is true, the discussion won’t be very good. I still disagree with Danglars’ post that Erasme was responding to (for reasons mostly enumerated in that Atlantic article), but I think Danglars wound up kind of unfairly serving as a proxy for Erasme’s frustration with a lot of cynical right-wing arguments in general.
Twitter is a toxic cesspool. Not like the oasis here at TL.
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With reports of Trump calling Roger Stone to say he is commuting his sentence and Michael Cohen put back in prison, the only person in prison for the whole Russia Gate/Mueller investigation debacle is the guy who blew the whistle.
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On July 11 2020 08:58 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2020 08:47 Wegandi wrote:On July 11 2020 05:55 ChristianS wrote:I don’t generally like to just drop a tweet thread in here, but this one is talking about an issue I was discussing a little while back with current online discourse. And it might be relevant to the current dustup with Danglars? https://twitter.com/millicentsomer/status/1281414272984027137?s=21In this case, I think Erasme was reacting less to Danglars specifically and more to the (often cynical) use of the “rising cases, falling deaths” analysis in right-wing discourse (The Atlantic has a decent analysis of that phenomenon here). I’d consider plenty of that analysis worthy of mockery and scorn of the type Erasme gave (Dennis Prager’s “lockdown may be the greatest mistake in human history” comes to mind), but Danglars didn’t say any of that. Maybe he thinks it and is holding his tongue, but if we assume the shittiest possible version of other posters’ intents and arguments is true, the discussion won’t be very good. I still disagree with Danglars’ post that Erasme was responding to (for reasons mostly enumerated in that Atlantic article), but I think Danglars wound up kind of unfairly serving as a proxy for Erasme’s frustration with a lot of cynical right-wing arguments in general. To me, I find it weirdly odd how blame is levied with regards to COVID. Yeah, Trump is a dipshit, but in the US response is generally state-level (this is good, by the way), and the worst state with regards to C19 is NY and specifically with Cuomo's and NYC's response telling people to congregate, go to bars and restaurants, and forcing C19 positive elderly into SNF's with non-infected resulting in thousands of deaths. Yet, you don't really hear much about this, or that CA is in the same position as TX and FL. For better or worse you can't blame Trump for Cuomo's negligence and ineptness, DeSantis' decisions in FL, or Newsom's in CA. You can levy all the criticisms with his bullshit about masks and simplistic rhetoric with testing, but it seems to me that the people who only shout Trump just don't understand our federated system. By the way the Atlantic article is good. I pointed out a lot of the same things a while ago and I'm still in the wait and see part about the deaths. By the way, it was the CDC in the beginning who told people to not wear masks lol (and who botched test kits, etc.) and the FDA regulatory bodies made early testing extremely prohibitive/banned in many aspects. My general point here is that Government in general is inept and incompetent, not just Trump. For those who look to Government to cure all ills it's a hard pillow to swallow. The difference is timing. New York has switched up their approach, at first you are correct they were horrible and they paid an immense price. Now your hearing about a bunch of states that didn't learn from New York and are doing the exact same things of letting it get out of control and then putting in measures. It is just dumber because they had the New York example and we now know so much more about how to deal with it. And you are right that it is going bad in California and it run by a Dem. But from what I have seen he has not been actively spreading false information. Trump gets the most attention because he is the president, and he wants all the attention. And in this case he is spreading dangerous lies about the pandemic that others are following. It is great news if he finally wears a mask, hopefully he will also tell others too and stop some of the insanity of having the sitting president spreading lies about how the pandemic spreads, what people should do, and proper treatment. It is absolutely insane that it is happening and this is why it gets talked about.
Sure, and I said that's a valid criticism, but a lot of people are solely blaming Trump for US C19 outcome, when in reality he has little influence. Yes, he says dumb shit, yes some small minority of people listen to his dumb shit, but the majority response is at the state level. States like NY, CA, AZ, TX, FL, IL, MA are some of the worst, and guess what it's pretty even when it comes to who is in charge. As you see in this thread some point just want to point at Trump and Republicans, but thats not the truth of the matter, and if there is anything I hate and I will always point out its hypocrisy and blind partisanry. Since TL skews heavily progressive and democratic I tend to point out one side more than the other, but ask Danglar's I'm an equal opportunist when given the chance.
https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases
Just like it was dumb for GOP to say Trump was responsible for the economy, it's stupid to say Trump is wholly responsible for US C19 outcome. We live in a federated republic, not a dictatorship where you just blame or praise the President for everything.
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On July 11 2020 08:37 Wombat_NI wrote:
84% of Americans are wearing a mask?
That sounds like bollocks based on what’s been anecdotally reported here and in the Corona thread
I’d estimate it’s 5% tops over here
It is 84% have worn a mask, if I'm reading the poll correctly. Regular use is probably lower. Numbers in favor of mask mandates are 71%, which is the number I think is closer to the generally uses category. People also lie on polls. That's also nationwide - some states are probably 99% while I think Florida is 45-50% max
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On July 11 2020 09:04 GreenHorizons wrote:
With reports of Trump calling Roger Stone to say he is commuting his sentence and Michael Cohen put back in prison, the only person in prison for the whole Russia Gate/Mueller investigation debacle is the guy who blew the whistle.
Those are reports no more. Trump confirms it on his Twitter. Definitely a disgrace. If one person in the country deserves jail for their political acts, it is Roger stone( there is some room for debate on Flynn, but Stone has always been the worst of the worst)
Trump retweeted this :
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"LAW AND ORDER"
What a fucking joke. Anyone still defending Trump and his ilk are cowards.
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On July 11 2020 04:08 Biff The Understudy wrote:There is a great piece in 538 about confederate statues and how they were never meant to preserve history. With their usual extensive data, they show that they have been erected as a symbol of white supremacy in eras where the civil rights of black folks were under attack, by people such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a slavery-nostalgic, KKK praiser, racist group. Here it is: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/confederate-statues/
That's a bad piece. The author clearly doesn't know the history of Reconstruction. Memorials and statues were outlawed by Northern constructionists. When they were finally voted out of power (around the beginning of the 20th Century) you can see what happened. There was a huge spike with memorials, statues, etc. When given the first opportunity to recognize their heritage they did so. (For those who don't know Reconstruction ended around 1895-1900)
Now, the small blip in the 60s was clearly related to Jim Crow/Segregation and Civil rights stuff at the time (My family is from the south, I was born there, I know the history).
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It is a joke, Trump and Roger stone are both traitors to this country.
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Most people say reconstruction ended in 1877 with the Great Compromise, even in the south. Never heard of it as ending in 1895, and I grew up semi in the south on a border state(my middle name is after Lee... my grandmother's family was very southern).
1895-1905 was around when black people were totally disenfranchised, though.
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On July 11 2020 08:47 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2020 05:55 ChristianS wrote:I don’t generally like to just drop a tweet thread in here, but this one is talking about an issue I was discussing a little while back with current online discourse. And it might be relevant to the current dustup with Danglars? https://twitter.com/millicentsomer/status/1281414272984027137?s=21In this case, I think Erasme was reacting less to Danglars specifically and more to the (often cynical) use of the “rising cases, falling deaths” analysis in right-wing discourse (The Atlantic has a decent analysis of that phenomenon here). I’d consider plenty of that analysis worthy of mockery and scorn of the type Erasme gave (Dennis Prager’s “lockdown may be the greatest mistake in human history” comes to mind), but Danglars didn’t say any of that. Maybe he thinks it and is holding his tongue, but if we assume the shittiest possible version of other posters’ intents and arguments is true, the discussion won’t be very good. I still disagree with Danglars’ post that Erasme was responding to (for reasons mostly enumerated in that Atlantic article), but I think Danglars wound up kind of unfairly serving as a proxy for Erasme’s frustration with a lot of cynical right-wing arguments in general. To me, I find it weirdly odd how blame is levied with regards to COVID. Yeah, Trump is a dipshit, but in the US response is generally state-level (this is good, by the way), and the worst state with regards to C19 is NY and specifically with Cuomo's and NYC's response telling people to congregate, go to bars and restaurants, and forcing C19 positive elderly into SNF's with non-infected resulting in thousands of deaths. Yet, you don't really hear much about this, or that CA is in the same position as TX and FL. For better or worse you can't blame Trump for Cuomo's negligence and ineptness, DeSantis' decisions in FL, or Newsom's in CA. You can levy all the criticisms with his bullshit about masks and simplistic rhetoric with testing, but it seems to me that the people who only shout Trump just don't understand our federated system. By the way the Atlantic article is good. I pointed out a lot of the same things a while ago and I'm still in the wait and see part about the deaths. By the way, it was the CDC in the beginning who told people to not wear masks lol (and who botched test kits, etc.) and the FDA regulatory bodies made early testing extremely prohibitive/banned in many aspects. My general point here is that Government in general is inept and incompetent, not just Trump. For those who look to Government to cure all ills it's a hard pillow to swallow.
Which is essentially a post I considered making to Wombat_NI but didn't. When he thinks I'm not punishing Trump enough by saying "he hasn't managed the crisis well," I have an inclination of what he wishes Trump would've done, and all the things he rates worse than I do, and all the things he totally discounts that I don't.
I like the state-level and I want every governor & state legislature to have extreme latitude to tell Trump "fuck no, we aren't doing any of that." Both with South Dakota treating it all very passe and never shutting down, to California going nuclear very early on. Cuomo's fateful decision to fuck over his elderly population (For all the hatred against Florida, there's still less total deaths than NY deaths just in nursing homes, and you know how many elderly live in Florida) is a comparable negligence of responsibility as Trump's decision to not lead in spoken and written word, since his duties do not extend far past saying the right things in a national crisis.
I think also the great irony asking a small government type, who hates the mismanaged and utterly impotent civil service and federal word salad departments, to do more to hate a government response to a crisis. I'm not a small government guy just to get shocked because the umpteenth president in a row couldn't do good with that monstrosity. You're looking for some god-king that most religions would hold up their hand to say "that's a big much."
On July 11 2020 09:07 Wegandi wrote:Sure, and I said that's a valid criticism, but a lot of people are solely blaming Trump for US C19 outcome, when in reality he has little influence. Yes, he says dumb shit, yes some small minority of people listen to his dumb shit, but the majority response is at the state level. States like NY, CA, AZ, TX, FL, IL, MA are some of the worst, and guess what it's pretty even when it comes to who is in charge. As you see in this thread some point just want to point at Trump and Republicans, but thats not the truth of the matter, and if there is anything I hate and I will always point out its hypocrisy and blind partisanry. Since TL skews heavily progressive and democratic I tend to point out one side more than the other, but ask Danglar's I'm an equal opportunist when given the chance. https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#casesJust like it was dumb for GOP to say Trump was responsible for the economy, it's stupid to say Trump is wholly responsible for US C19 outcome. We live in a federated republic, not a dictatorship where you just blame or praise the President for everything.
I mean you're an equal opportunity offender, which is a strike against anyone that thinks you're partially defending Trump because you're a sold-out Trump supporter. I already said that Trump's job in this kind of crisis is mostly the messaging, and he fails on that hardcore. Nobody listens to him anyways, which is a weak defense, yet the people constantly on attack against him have fucked up so bad themselves that they've earned similar levels of distrust.
I wish structural limits on power were a bigger thing. Like actually glamorous. Not the 2008-2016 "In Obama We Trust" journalistic vacation, and 2016-present "Trump, Worst President Ever or Literal Nazi, you decide!" Every four years your nuanced political opinions get boiled down to the Stupidest Way Ever to Rate Somebody's Politics because votes in our current system are binary. It's a miracle that we still have independent states, and let's work at making that big federal money bag mean less to make states kowtow, ok? You can lose in that case, but maybe you're in a state that thinks Republicans are just too extreme, and you can preserve power for most everything that matters there, yeah? Same for those that think Democrats are too far left, go do you.
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On July 11 2020 09:34 JimmiC wrote:
@danglars that 1000th concern troll post where you strawman peoples points then ask for pity finally worked. We all feel ultra bad for you and realize that you have been the voice of reason. Why should you consider not voting for Trump when he is causing 1000's of deaths, that you mention that he could have handled it better is totally an appropriate response.
I imagine a future where everybody concerned with the future is dismissed as a concern troll. How dare we believe in something so pure in this world of partisanship!
I'm not asking for brownie points for declaring Trump to have handled the crisis badly, nor do I seek your approval to say I've done enough penance to earn my own upright standing. I'm deeply sorry, and a little troubled, if I've given either impression.
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On July 11 2020 09:25 Nevuk wrote:
Most people say reconstruction ended in 1877 with the Great Compromise, even in the south. Never heard of it as ending in 1895, and I grew up semi in the south on a border state(my middle name is after Lee... my grandmother's family was very southern).
1895-1905 was around when black people were totally disenfranchised, though.
Oh for sure, Jim Crow and KKK picked up around the turn of the century, I'm just saying the argument that the statues weren't erected right after the end of the Civil War is a specious argument because of the history of Reconstruction.
(By the way just as a side point since you brought up Lee, I really hate how everyone is lumped together especially guys like Lee, Jackson, etc. with repugnant asses like NB Forrest, but that's a topic for another time I suppose)
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Norway28712 Posts
Man if Trump's handling of the Corona was absolutely fucking flawless and his opponent was Joe Biden who stated man I think masks look pretty stupid, I'd rather not be seen wearing one, I'd still vote biden 100%. Danglars is a really conservative guy who has absolutely no home in the democrat party, expecting mishandling of a pandemic to change that isn't reasonable. It's sad that he's left with Trump because I'm sure he'd prefer a myriad of other republicans, but Covid handling isn't the primary reason why a person chooses a particular presidential candidate to vote for. Courts is still a legitimate reason if you happen to prefer republican policies, I don't understand what you guys are expecting beyond 'yeah, trump is an idiot and he shows it again here'.
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On July 11 2020 07:30 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2020 05:15 ChristianS wrote:
He’s referencing the Erasme quote, but also (willfully?) misunderstanding the “I hope you’re happy” idiom in a way that just confuses me. Honestly, though, I think Erasme was a bit too aggressive there, especially in a non-politics thread. Probably the best defense I can hope for around these parts. Show nested quote +On July 11 2020 05:55 ChristianS wrote:I don’t generally like to just drop a tweet thread in here, but this one is talking about an issue I was discussing a little while back with current online discourse. And it might be relevant to the current dustup with Danglars? https://twitter.com/millicentsomer/status/1281414272984027137?s=21In this case, I think Erasme was reacting less to Danglars specifically and more to the (often cynical) use of the “rising cases, falling deaths” analysis in right-wing discourse (The Atlantic has a decent analysis of that phenomenon here). I’d consider plenty of that analysis worthy of mockery and scorn of the type Erasme gave (Dennis Prager’s “lockdown may be the greatest mistake in human history” comes to mind), but Danglars didn’t say any of that. Maybe he thinks it and is holding his tongue, but if we assume the shittiest possible version of other posters’ intents and arguments is true, the discussion won’t be very good. I still disagree with Danglars’ post that Erasme was responding to (for reasons mostly enumerated in that Atlantic article), but I think Danglars wound up kind of unfairly serving as a proxy for Erasme’s frustration with a lot of cynical right-wing arguments in general. I honestly think hospitalizations should be discussed in terms of hospitals dealing with capacity concerns and what should be done in the case of hospital beds meeting demands. The "flatten the curve" dialogue was not about preventing the spread, but lowering the rate so hospitals are not overwhelmed. I think that's an important dialogue in the case of phased reopening. But people bringing right-wing baggage with them into that discussion to do some kind of group responsibility dialogue hurt the debate. And I know people that have something huge happen in their life, and suddenly they're extreme and extremely vocal on an issue, just looking for a fight, so I want to express some humility here. I don't know what's going on, and his ideas may evolve on this topic through this or through an actual in-person conversation with something that disagrees with him. I'll transition from Erasme for a moment, because what that individual said and people that thought it was fine centers around real people and not ideas (and can be mistaken for attacks on the person, and not their current orientation on ideas). The steps that governors and public health professionals take that hurt their message and show caprice in their orders simply empower people that don't want to wear masks or want to have a few friends over for 4th of July. If the ideological vantage point is "these people are one step removed from covid-denying hoaxers, supporting a President that hasn't managed the crisis well, thus sharing group responsibility for some of the deaths" then the societal response is increased disobedience. It's the old photo op of unmasked governor marching with thousands packed into a street to protest police brutality, then telling people that churches can't reopen for fear of spreading covid. I'm still sitting at home twiddling my thumbs with my roommate, but I have very little condemnation for friends that have a barbecue with their friends to "protest injustice and say that Black Lives Matter." Their own elected leaders have shown they play favorites, that COVID isn't a good reason to delay mass protests if the cause is very important, so that is their protest of double standards. I think that kind of dialogue is too easily dismissed in the debates I've been hearing. But I did already write a megapost on that topic, so I'll leave it there.
Yeah, we and others have gone back and forth on a lot of that before. I’ll resist the urge to dive into one of those disputes again (I was pretty sure you were mad at me after our last back-and-forth and still might be), but I will say that I understand why Erasme or Sim or Jimmi would have pretty thin patience for right-wing arguments attempting to diminish the magnitude of the pandemic and/or promote the merits of relaxing our countermeasures. From the start of this thing it’s been “almost contained” and “no worse than the flu” and “with suicides the economic damage of shutdown might be just as lethal” and “now that we have HCQ we don’t need to shut down” and the like. It’s hard to see anything other than panicked Trump supporters casting about for any defense or deflection they can grab.
I should say I think that’s understandable. In the same way the pandemic has been a really hard time to be a libertarian, recent events have made this a really rough time to be a Trump supporter. It’s natural for someone to get defensive, cling to the grievances that motivate them, and then fumble in the dark for a rhetorical rock to beat back their attackers with. Arguments like those fit the bill in the moment they were needed, even if usually (often remarkably quickly) they later proved to be foolish and wrong.
But I also think many of the purveyors of those arguments made them in bad faith. I think they were intended to obscure rather than clarify the issues facing the country, and I think they’ve ultimately made us less safe. Considering the stakes, strong condemnation of that kind of bad-faith argument seems appropriate.
The trouble with that kind of thinking is that you start approaching discussions as matters of target acquisition and identification rather than argument. If I start out thinking “are you the kind of Republican who makes those arguments” I’d probably find a lot of evidence in favor. Like, if I put together a bingo card of the top 25 right-wing pandemic arguments I think have been advanced in cynical and insincere ways, and then went back through your posts, I’d probably find a lot of “hits” where you either explicitly made one of those arguments, or at least gestured suggestively in its direction.
But that’s a bad way to think about arguments. In a lot of those cases you might actually be arguing something adjacent to (and less objectionable than) my prototype. And even if I think the argument is often cynical and insincere coming from others, you might be advancing it sincerely. And even if it is more rationalization than sincere belief, so what? How many of my own arguments are rhetorical or egotistical rather than sincere pursuits of truth? I try to examine my beliefs and be honest with myself about my intentions, but it’s hard work and I don’t always succeed.
Ultimately I don’t need a bingo card to know you and I have a lot of fundamental disagreements on important issues, including the pandemic. If we want to hash those out we’re free to; or if either of us doesn’t want to, or thinks the other is too much of a bad actor for it to be worthwhile, we’re free to disengage. But if we do engage, our hyperliteracy (borrowing a term from that tweet thread) of how this argument “normally” plays out is usually an impediment, an excuse to assume the other is making or about to make shitty arguments they didn’t say out loud yet.
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On July 11 2020 09:52 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2020 07:30 Danglars wrote:On July 11 2020 05:15 ChristianS wrote:
He’s referencing the Erasme quote, but also (willfully?) misunderstanding the “I hope you’re happy” idiom in a way that just confuses me. Honestly, though, I think Erasme was a bit too aggressive there, especially in a non-politics thread. Probably the best defense I can hope for around these parts. On July 11 2020 05:55 ChristianS wrote:I don’t generally like to just drop a tweet thread in here, but this one is talking about an issue I was discussing a little while back with current online discourse. And it might be relevant to the current dustup with Danglars? https://twitter.com/millicentsomer/status/1281414272984027137?s=21In this case, I think Erasme was reacting less to Danglars specifically and more to the (often cynical) use of the “rising cases, falling deaths” analysis in right-wing discourse (The Atlantic has a decent analysis of that phenomenon here). I’d consider plenty of that analysis worthy of mockery and scorn of the type Erasme gave (Dennis Prager’s “lockdown may be the greatest mistake in human history” comes to mind), but Danglars didn’t say any of that. Maybe he thinks it and is holding his tongue, but if we assume the shittiest possible version of other posters’ intents and arguments is true, the discussion won’t be very good. I still disagree with Danglars’ post that Erasme was responding to (for reasons mostly enumerated in that Atlantic article), but I think Danglars wound up kind of unfairly serving as a proxy for Erasme’s frustration with a lot of cynical right-wing arguments in general. I honestly think hospitalizations should be discussed in terms of hospitals dealing with capacity concerns and what should be done in the case of hospital beds meeting demands. The "flatten the curve" dialogue was not about preventing the spread, but lowering the rate so hospitals are not overwhelmed. I think that's an important dialogue in the case of phased reopening. But people bringing right-wing baggage with them into that discussion to do some kind of group responsibility dialogue hurt the debate. And I know people that have something huge happen in their life, and suddenly they're extreme and extremely vocal on an issue, just looking for a fight, so I want to express some humility here. I don't know what's going on, and his ideas may evolve on this topic through this or through an actual in-person conversation with something that disagrees with him. I'll transition from Erasme for a moment, because what that individual said and people that thought it was fine centers around real people and not ideas (and can be mistaken for attacks on the person, and not their current orientation on ideas). The steps that governors and public health professionals take that hurt their message and show caprice in their orders simply empower people that don't want to wear masks or want to have a few friends over for 4th of July. If the ideological vantage point is "these people are one step removed from covid-denying hoaxers, supporting a President that hasn't managed the crisis well, thus sharing group responsibility for some of the deaths" then the societal response is increased disobedience. It's the old photo op of unmasked governor marching with thousands packed into a street to protest police brutality, then telling people that churches can't reopen for fear of spreading covid. I'm still sitting at home twiddling my thumbs with my roommate, but I have very little condemnation for friends that have a barbecue with their friends to "protest injustice and say that Black Lives Matter." Their own elected leaders have shown they play favorites, that COVID isn't a good reason to delay mass protests if the cause is very important, so that is their protest of double standards. I think that kind of dialogue is too easily dismissed in the debates I've been hearing. But I did already write a megapost on that topic, so I'll leave it there. Yeah, we and others have gone back and forth on a lot of that before. I’ll resist the urge to dive into one of those disputes again (I was pretty sure you were mad at me after our last back-and-forth and still might be), but I will say that I understand why Erasme or Sim or Jimmi would have pretty thin patience for right-wing arguments attempting to diminish the magnitude of the pandemic and/or promote the merits of relaxing our countermeasures. From the start of this thing it’s been “almost contained” and “no worse than the flu” and “with suicides the economic damage of shutdown might be just as lethal” and “now that we have HCQ we don’t need to shut down” and the like. It’s hard to see anything other than panicked Trump supporters casting about for any defense or deflection they can grab. I should say I think that’s understandable. In the same way the pandemic has been a really hard time to be a libertarian,
On the contrary, I think it's a great time to be a libertarian. It's so easy to show how useless and in the way the FDA is, the regulatory burdens on our institutions that cause untold damage, the general incompetence and danger of Government, etc.
You know the first things they did that helped immensely? They stopped enforcing and did away with a huge number of dumb regulations. The FDA scrapped a bunch of regulations as well. Things became more free. I'm sure though once this C19 thing is over people will forget all about it and go back to status quo, but regardless it's astonishing how quickly these are ditched in emergencies which goes to show just how dumb they are in the first place.
Of course, I'm sure you're just talking about closing businesses/lockdown like there's no argument against it.
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On July 11 2020 08:51 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2020 05:55 ChristianS wrote:I don’t generally like to just drop a tweet thread in here, but this one is talking about an issue I was discussing a little while back with current online discourse. And it might be relevant to the current dustup with Danglars? https://twitter.com/millicentsomer/status/1281414272984027137?s=21In this case, I think Erasme was reacting less to Danglars specifically and more to the (often cynical) use of the “rising cases, falling deaths” analysis in right-wing discourse (The Atlantic has a decent analysis of that phenomenon here). I’d consider plenty of that analysis worthy of mockery and scorn of the type Erasme gave (Dennis Prager’s “lockdown may be the greatest mistake in human history” comes to mind), but Danglars didn’t say any of that. Maybe he thinks it and is holding his tongue, but if we assume the shittiest possible version of other posters’ intents and arguments is true, the discussion won’t be very good. I still disagree with Danglars’ post that Erasme was responding to (for reasons mostly enumerated in that Atlantic article), but I think Danglars wound up kind of unfairly serving as a proxy for Erasme’s frustration with a lot of cynical right-wing arguments in general. Twitter is a toxic cesspool. Not like the oasis here at TL.
I do think TL has a lot of advantages for holding constructive discussion. The combination of pretty ambitious moderation, lack of public visibility, and limited population with long posting histories and awareness of each other’s positions helps a lot. But I don’t think the problem is limited to social media. I’ve even noticed some similar dynamics discussing with long-time friends and acquaintances IRL.
I generally get the impression you’d like to treat every discussion as an academic, dispassionate pursuit of truth; it shouldn’t even matter if an argument is in bad faith or not, we should just consider it on its merits. I would prefer that, too. Especially this year my goal on TL is to always post sincerely, never strategically, and if I think someone is a bad actor intentionally obfuscating to just disengage. If others do the same the discussion might actually be enlightening.
That works well enough for TL, but it’s not much of a template for the national conversation. For anyone who considers it their job to argue a position or move public opinion or analyze current events and construct narratives, you have to consider the rhetorical impact of your words as much as (and probably a lot more than) their truth. To quote that tweet thread, “good faith engagement is maladaptive.”
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EPT
